How does aspirin know which part of you hurts?

Klonie JORDAN

So I spent the weekend installing a new hard drive in a laptop - the very laptop I am using at this moment to type this column.

And while it wasn't a difficult job, it was very timeconsuming, very aggravating, and very tedious.

Tack onto that the fact that my beloved Duke Blue Devils lost - again - my golf game has inexplicably disappeared (if you find it lying around somewhere, please return it … there's a modest reward) and you will understand why I'm not in a very good mood.

Therefore I could care less about the NCAA Basketball Tournament (it is, after all, baseball season so let's get this boring throwing-an-inflated-ballthrough a-metal-hoop charade over with and get down to calling balls and strikes) and any effort to rope me into one of those baloney prediction pools will be met with a firm "AH, BRACKET THIS, YA PATHETIC LOSER!"

But I'm not bitter.

Honest.

Life goes on, or so they say.

Which brings me to the topic of things I don't understand.

I'm not talking about supernatural things, like why they won't call a foul on Tyler Hansbrough.

No, I'm talking about things that benefit mankind that I don't understand.

For example, when you swallow an aspirin, how does it know where to go?

Seriously. This kind of thing really intrigues me. I've often wondered about this and have come up with the following theory, which is not really a theory at all but more a wild story that is pretty much historically inaccurate but is probably still much more entertaining than the truth.

My theory is that at some point immediately following the invention of aspirin by Hubert R. Aspirin, I'll bet he was so excited that he threw a big party and invited all his friends over for frosty libations and dancing. I'm guessing they do-si-doed into the wee hours. And when Hubert awoke the next morning with a raging hangover headache, he probably rolled over, reached into the drawer on the nightstand, took out a couple of his brand newly-invented aspirins and swallowed them.

I further theorize that about an hour or so later, ole Hubert noticed his headache was still there. Upon further experimentation, he discovered the aspirins he had taken had gone to his feet (which hurt a little from all that dancing, but not nearly as much as his head hurt) and thus Mr. Aspirin was forced back to the drawing board. He subsequently came up with the secret ingredient that directs the aspirin to the appropriate part of the body.

I'm guessing that upon this discovery, he was tempted to throw another big party, but refrained and instead called a couple of his closest friends over and they had some lovely tea and crumpets and slapped each other on the back and then went to bed early, right after watching American Idol.

And now, when your knee hurts from whatever it is you do that makes your knee hurt, and you take an aspirin, the aspirin knows to go to your knee instead of, say, your butt.

Amazing, ain't it?

Something else I don't understand but greatly appreciate is how the U.S. Postal Service works. This is W-AA A-Y-Y-Y beyond my powers of comprehension. I mean, think about it, you drop three or four letters in that little slot and all of them are going to different places, yet somehow, some way, they all get to where they are supposed to go in a matter of two or three days.

And not only that, yours is not the ONLY mail they have to deliver.

There are literally millions of other envelopes, boxes, sweepstakes offers, Victoria's Secret catalogs (I get one just in case I want to buy my wife something frilly), fabric softener and perfume samples, and useless catalogs that are dropped off or picked up by the post office every day and pretty much all of it gets where the senders want it to go.

They use trucks, and planes, and boats, and sled dogs and carrier pigeons and virtually every other means of delivery available to make this happen. I'll bet that when Roger Q. "Pony" Express put those first two mail sacks on that first horse and sent them from Casper, Wyoming to Laramie (this too, is historically inaccurate, I just like saying "Laramie"), he never envisioned that some day there would be giant jets carrying mail all over the world.

And if he did envision it, chances are that he cut way back on his saloon visits.

So when I first heard about this newest postal rate increase, I was a bit perturbed because I had just gone and bought four books of stamps - FOUR OF THEM! - because I just wanted to make sure I had plenty on hand and besides I don't like going through that drivethrough window because it's really hard to get the coins off the bottom of that little cardboard box they put your change in (it's like trying to pick a dime up off the floor while wearing mittens).

It's going to take me months to use FOUR BOOKS OF STAMPS. And now if I don't use these stamps by the day the rate increase takes effect, I'm going to have to stick one of those 1-cent stamps on every envelope I send and I can't tell you how annoying that's going to be.

I hate the concept of multiple stamps on pieces of mail. It's like cooking a 3-legged chicken; it's just unnatural and frankly it's a little spooky.

I can't take all this stress and aggravation. I've got a killer headache.

I wonder if we have any aspirin.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.